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Pronunciation Plus- Teacher's Manual
Hewings, M., & Goldstein, S. (1999). Pronunciation plus: Practice through interaction : North American English : Teacher's manual. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Pronunciation plus is aimed for teachers. This book states on the back that it can be used by teacher who do not have formal training. It makes it clear in the introduction that it’s aim is not to focus on induvidual sounds (as it says most other pronunciation books do) but to work on the different areas that “cause difficulty to non-native speakers” (vi). The book gives full linguistic explanations for how and why connected speech occurs, though it says that it is not important to teach students linguistic terminology. Sounds in connected speech (pg. 80) This part encompasses seven units. As with many of the books covered, it explains that students should be made aware that these features are not fast lazy speech but rather a normal part of conversational English. This section focuses on listening, though it does note that if the aim is to sound like a native than learners would need to be able to produce these. The author makes it clear that students should be able to hear and understand connected speech, though using it is not neccesary to communicate (pg 84). Slow speech and connected speech & Common words and phrases Units 31-32 (pg 81) Explanation The purpose of both of these units appears to be to familiarize students with what connected speech sounds like. The book makes it explicit that teachers should “encourage students to make use of contextual clues to complete the tasks.” Unit 32 continues this but puts the emphasis on common phrases in English that usually use connected speech. There is also isolation of explanations or tasks for induvidual connected speech features in these units. This would make sense with the overview nature of units 31-32. It gives very good explanations for the teaching on what features are occurring. Under each activity is a description of the connecting features and how and why they occur. These sections are sections also instruct the teacher where to point the student’s attention to and ways of explaining the features. It also contains short annotations under “Background” showing where these features were present in or similar to features covered in other chapters. 'Tasks' These units use cloze-speech, matching, and fill-in-the-blank exercises to be used with the accompanying audio tapes. In the task of page 83 the book instructs the teacher to correct students if they stress unemphasized function words. It explains that it is important to use an unemphasized schwa when correcting students. The book suggests making these corrections by demonstrating the words in phrases so as to avoid unintended emphasis. ''Linking words: consonant + vowel- Unit 33 (pg 85) Explanation The book gives a textbook explanation of linking. It advices that instructors can use linking to help students by showing them how it can be used to break up consonant clusters. Extension (pg 88) The book offers extra practice by having students take other books they are using and draw lines on the text where they think sounds would be linked. The teacher would then play the audio from that book so students could see if their predictions were correct. ''Linking words: consonant + consonant- ''Unit 34 (pg 87) Explanation The book explains the difficulty students have with this, and that it is helpful to show them how the bounderies between words can be redrawn through linking. It also explains that teaching this helps students to avoid simply deleting consonants from clusters. It suggest rewriting the words the way they are linked. (pg 88) It can be more difficult when the second word start with ð or θ. Example for teaching- rewrite "missed them" as "miss dthem." ''More on linking words together with consonants ''Unit 35 (pg 89) Explanation When one word ends in the same consonant as the beginning of the next word it is lengthened (except affricates). It says the exception is when the first word is unstressed, it does not always lengthen. In the ''extention ''(pg 89) it gives a detailed explanation about the sound change that occures between voiced/unvoiced equivalents nasals (pg 89). This in further in explained ''background ''(pg 90) with an explanation on palatization for alveolar consonants. The book recommends encouraging students to use the palatized pronunciation. ''Sounds that link words: /w/ and /y/ Unit 36 (pg 91) Explanation Nothing uniqie. Textbook explanation for using /w/ or /y/ (what the book uses instead of /j/) to link vowels.